Sunday, October 15, 2006

Foley vs. Studds

Because speaking ill of the dead is yet another IOKIYAR activity, I figured I'll pre-emptively blog about the difference between what Studds did and what Foley seems to have done, 'cause we all know right-blogostan will be talking about Studds non-stop now that he's no longer alive to defend himself:

Studds did something wrong -- he had an affair with an under-age page. Foley seems to have been a serial hounder of pages and his activities were covered up by others. Do people not see the difference? Alas, unless news analysts (I'm talking to you Danny Schorr) actually explain this to people rather than regurgitate the news on command, people will be convinced not to get it.

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Meanwhile, it seems Bush has definitely lost the support of Daniel Schorr, who's now snarky toward Bush instead of repeating Bush's opinions as if they were fact. Still, though -- I'm with ya Dan when you wonder why Iran wants to have bilateral talks with us (does anybody know why? Schorr suggests the Rodney Dangerfield reason -- they want to get respect), but you cannot figure out why North Korea, dependent as they are on China, would rather not have talks with China (did your teenage kids wanna talk with you much? they were dependent on you, but that only made them, wanting to be adults, wanna listen to you even less, eh?) not to mention former enemies like South Korea and Japan. I never understood the attitudes of those in our foreign policy establishment and the punditocracy who act as if "all those Asian countries are together on everything" and don't get that just 'cause South Korea, Japan, China, et al are neighbors doesn't mean they see eye to eye on everything. What's with the subtle anti-Asian prejudice, and why aren't the media and foreign policy establishment called on it?